Morbius: It's Morbin' Time

Jul 26

Morbius, released in April 2022 and starring Jared Leto as the titular character, has been the subject of many viral Twitter threads…if only because it somehow became a meme completely unrelated to the plot of the movie itself. To be completely honest, I don’t remember watching most of the movie. In fact, I fell asleep multiple times, including towards the very end. So, this review will consist primarily of the little I still remember, why I fell asleep, and why its main character has become a highly successful meme.

The film starts off with Dr. Michael Morbius attempting to explore a forbidden cave full of bats. Then, we flashback to his youth, revealing his rare blood disease and history of living in a home with other severely ill children. We also learn that his childhood friend Lucien Crown/Milo (Matt Smith), in an encounter with the neighborhood kids, was brutally beaten after attempting to defend himself. In the present day, Morbius has cured his own disease and become a vampire. His old friend discovers the secret, undergoes the transformation, and goes on a murderous rampage. Morbius defeats him by summoning an army of bats (an ability I am not sure how he developed last-minute). He also accidentally turns his accomplice Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona) into a vampire.

This is literally all I was awake to see. Why, you might ask? Two reasons. One: I had just eaten. Two: the film was a symphony of well-played notes organized in the wrong order with inappropriate plot points (e.g. Morbius’s random powerup) and an abrupt ending. Morbius runs away from the final battlefield after his forementioned powerup…and it literally ends there. Contrary to what we might have assumed from the trailer, the end-credit scenes show us that this story is also not explicitly connected to our main universe, Earth-266. However, we aren’t given concrete answers as to which universe this is and why Vulcan (Michael Keaton) was transported there following the events of No Way Home. That leaves us with one question: why is this movie still trending?

The answer is simple. The movie sucks so much in the midst of our other well-written and directed superhero films that it is simply astonishing. So astonishing in fact that those who have suffered through this sleep-inducing experience have decided to troll those who still think it could be a good movie. Even Jared Leto himself has joined the party.

With that being said, all this buzz is undoubtedly making people actually watch it. Needless to say, future viewers will most-likely leave the experience feeling betrayed by their fellow fans who gaslit them into thinking the film is a masterpiece. And, as disappointing as this movie is, the simple fact that so many people are buzzing about it may be sufficient enough for another film to be created - which would evidently breed more memes. Of course, only time will tell

Morbius is now streaming on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video.